17 February 2010

Thank You, PG

The pictures hardly do this day justice. What you see below is me going backside followed by me flying off the board with my feet in the air and my dreads going in all different directions. Same old, same old. Wrong!!

This was the day. After the knee replacement, I listened to my body and my mind, waiting for them to come to some agreement about when we'd all be ready to paddle out again. Well, almost a year after surgery, the three of us came together once again. Although my ultimate goal had always been to get back on a surfboard, my secondary goal was to get back on my shorter boards. I got my last custom board in a shorter length as motivation to work toward the secondary goal.

Today was the day I decided it would be the PG/SK seven foot hull or nothing. I've worked hard, given the advice I got from Cher Pendarvis, to strengthen my core so that it would do all the work in popping up. My hesitation in surfing my shorter boards has stemmed from the fact that this new knee bends rather slowly. My once quick pop-ups had slowed to accommodate the new knee. I've noticed over the last week or so that my pop-ups were almost back to normal or as close to normal as they will probably ever be. I figured today was as good a day as any to work on popping up on a shorter board.

I got five waves!!! Granted, they were shaky. (It is a hull, not a longboard.) They were still waves where I got to my feet in time to greet the face of the wave. And with that, my knee replacement goals have all been met. I've got nothing left but to celebrate the fact that I live in a time when they can repair joints and give most of us our lives back.

What happened after that session? I took my PG mat out and got pummeled in the closeouts. I still had a blast though.